I get what you are trying to accomplish, but this really isn't the problem your opponents have with the H1B program.<p>From the H1B website[1]<p><i>The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.</i><p>Now let's look at the top 10 companies that sponsor H1B visas:<p><pre><code> Deloitte & Touche 16,409
Tata Consultancy Services 14,604
Cognizant Technology Solutions 13,074
infosys 11,591
IBM 8,344
Ernst & Young 6,893
Capgemini 6,739
Google 6,656
Tech Mahindra (Americas) 6,464
Accenture 6,381
</code></pre>
Here is the problem. Only two of the companies on this list aren't body shops, and IBM might actually be a body shop depending on which division is bring in the H1B.<p>Immigrants are a good thing, but the continued deceptive practices used by these companies to not hire people from the US is a problem. This is what your opponents are going to focus on and push forward. Disney bringing in H1B holders to replace workers, and the courts siding with Disney did not help the immigration story in the US.<p>It doesn't matter what good former H1B holders did if your kid / spouse / you got fired and replaced by cheaper H1B labor that you had to train to do your job. If you don't solve that problem then they will ignore any "how good it is" arguments.<p>1) <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b" rel="nofollow">https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b</a>
It's not just the companies they build: H1Bs are my colleagues and mentors and have made me, an American citizen, a better software engineer. I would not be where I am today without their knowledge and guidance.
Some of the entries seem wrong? I looked at Razer Inc's founder and he never did set foot in the USA as H1B, at least based on his wikipedia page. Was it just incorporated in the USA but HQ was somewhere else? If so, this is misleading. Also, H1-B does not allow you to found a startup. The path is H1B->green card->startup?
Been pondering this, but at root I think one disconnect is that H1B is very much “A Tale of Two Cities”. If you work for FAAMNG or FinTech, your H1B colleagues represent the spirit of the program: World-class engineering talent being compensated appropriately.<p>If you’re outside that world it’s less cut and dry. Employers use H1B to drive down wages. They have a hold over the employees and can sometimes mistreat them. And then there’s the historical practice of body shops outright abusing the visa in exact opposition to the intent.<p>I lay this at the feet of FAAMNG. Instead of sending the message that it was an unmitigated good, they could have acknowledged the negatives and used their position to lobby for reforms before we got here.
My understanding of H-1Bs is that the basis of the visa is that you are required to work for a U.S.-based employer. How does a H-1B holder get around this restriction in founding a startup?
A list of mostly European-origin people and almost exclusively European-origin and Asian-origin people is not likely to be well received these days as evidence that a US migration program is successful.
Nice list. To really communicate the point that immigrants contribute to the US economy, might be a good idea to include rough US employment numbers on the image itself instead of when clicking into each one, since the bulk of the rhetoric around immigration is "jobs" focused, especially US jobs (global jobs might be seen as outsourcing/not relevant)
Thank you for making this. It’s important to highlight the visibility of what immigrants have contributed to America. One of the reasons why the United States continues to be the powerhouse it is today is because of its continued influx of highly talented and educated people coming into the country. To block off this pipeline would be a mistake.
The name doesn't really make sense. H1-B visas are non-immigrant visas, and their holders can only work for certain US-based employers. Of course, plenty of people do go on to immigrate (through their H-1B employer or by other means) and then start a business, or in some cases even use that as their means of immigration, but the H1-B itself does not lead to new startups.
I wonder if the move against H-1Bs is good for the rest of the world.<p>How much would Evernote be contributing to the Azerbaijan economy if Stepan hadn’t left? Would London have more larger start ups?
I’m confused. Admittedly, I’m not very educated on this topic. But aren’t H1B visas used for employees? Why are founders using H1B visas to found a company in the US?<p>Wouldn’t E-1 visas and investor visas be more relevant to the discussion of people starting companies? Is Trump banning new issuances of those?